


She of the Water

by Ellerigby13



Series: Darcy Lewis Bingo 2020 [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Slavic Mythology & Folklore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Curses, F/F, Happy Ending, Pining, Witches, folktale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27230602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: The folk in the village are beginning to be afraid of the river which stretches between them and the nearest town, and nobody wants to explain why.Well, they have an explanation, but you’re not going to like it.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Natasha Romanov
Series: Darcy Lewis Bingo 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851811
Comments: 17
Kudos: 58
Collections: The Monster Mash





	She of the Water

**Author's Note:**

> While doing research for the Darcyverse server's mythology week, I found a spirit/deity that my last name (a pretty uncommon Croatian name) is derived from, so that's where we went!  
> Also works as a bingo fill for Darcy Lewis Bingo D4: DarcyxNatasha and Ladies of Marvel Bingo A2: Folktale.
> 
> Javor Hamenkov is the "mamlaz" (idiot, jerk, blockhead) also known as the olde Slavic counterpart to Justin Hammer.

The folk in the village are beginning to be afraid of the river which stretches between them and the nearest town, and nobody wants to explain why.

Well, they have an explanation, but you’re not going to like it.

It started a few months ago, when the daughter of the town weaver disappeared one night after, rumor had it, meeting with her beau in the woods beyond the river. For days they called her name, torches lit, searching the banks of the water and the meadows between the trees, squinting as hard as they could for any sign of her shining yellow hair, her pale skin like moonlight. It wasn’t until the twelfth night that they found her waterlogged body, not tangled in the weeds at the mouth of the river, or washed ashore some long way off with sand in her mouth and her belly bloated from decay, but lying limp in her own bed, perfectly preserved as if she had been doused in her sleep the night before.

This was strange, the townsfolk agreed, and frightening, but she was only one girl. Perhaps she had upset her lover, and he had taken her away, to be drowned and returned with guilt when he could no longer keep his secret. The only problem was, no wet footprints trailed in or out of her house when Carolina was found.

So they kept about their daily lives as much as they could, pretending that nothing had happened, until another girl disappeared a few weeks later. Wanda was returned in much the same way, twelve nights after she had left the house, her hair dripping beads of the river into the floor.

When the fifth girl disappeared, the people began to whisper. Fishermen left offerings of food at the banks to ask forgiveness and mercy from this vengeful river spirit, young men told tales of a frog-man with scales and webbed fingers over their fires, and the girls were advised not to cross the river if they could help it. The townspeople agreed that this quiet killer must have been wronged by them in some way, and if they could only appease him, he might stop taking their wives and daughters away from them. They called him the  _ vodyanoi _ , “he from the water,” because only women had met their strange and tragic fate at his fish-like hands.

This is where they made their mistake. The  _ vodyanoi _ is no fish- or frog-man.

Only a girl with a terrible curse.

A few years before the disappearances began, Darija Levinsckaya was born as normal as a baby could be. Dark hair, marble-colored skin, lips pink and soft as they came, and her eyes the icy blue of the winter sky. As a child, she was too bright for her own good, mischievous, with clever glances that made her mother sigh when she was caught in the act of something naughty.

“Your name means goodness,” Mama reminded Darija more often than she could count, with a sharp whip of whatever cloth she had nearby. “It might be an idea for you to live up to it.”

And though she grew up as kind as she had been mischievous, she had also grown up beautiful, and this was where the trouble began.

Suitors flitted into the doorway of her family’s homestead like flies flitting toward honey. Old men and young alike, thin and fat, gentle and callous, men of every kind. Her mother and father had married a long time past, but they had had love in their hearts for each other from the moment they met, so when Darija came of age that she might be old enough to accept one of these suitors’ hands, they agreed that she should be able to choose.

Only, she didn’t want any of them.

When the beams of the moon beat down through her window and across her bed, she folded both hands over her heart and thought of the girl who lived in the home next to theirs, her flaxen hair, blazing brown eyes, high, resounding laugh too vibrant not to be loved. Stana was married not long after, swept away to a larger town across the river, to be adored by a man with eyes just as steely blue as Darija’s, hair just as soft and dark, love just as wide and true.

Darija was so heartbroken at the loss of her friend that she did not pay mind to the suitor who arrived next.

“Miss Levinsckaya?” the voice called from the door, lilts of his attempt to be charming seeping through his tone. Javor Hamenkov was a straw-haired boy from the village, known for being exceptionally brainless and spineless, but believing himself something of a prince since his father was the best blacksmith for miles. Now he stood in her doorway, hands on his hips, a confident smile on his face. 

“I have come to ask your hand - now, before you say anything,” he cut in, taking a seat at her table without asking. “I want you to know I have much to offer as your husband. In fact, there are a few worthy young women who have already confessed that  _ they _ wish to give their hand, but you…” He smiled here, filing a limp strand of hair behind his ear. “...you have captured my attention. And I wish to give you the same sort of happiness you might give me.”

She looked at him, his earnest pompous face, and, before she could help herself, began to laugh. 

Javor was a proud boy, and being proud he did not take her initial rejection to heart. Instead, unlike the suitors who had come calling before, he arrived at her home the following day to ask for her hand again. And the day after that, and the day after that.

Eleven days had passed that Javor darkened the doorway of Darija’s home, and eleven times she rejected his hand with as kind a smile as she could manage.

On the twelfth day, his expression changed. There was no confident smile on his lips, but a slow, bubbling arrogance that spoke without words: he  _ would _ have her, or she would be sorry.

“This is the last time I will ask you, Miss Levinsckaya,” he said, as if in warning. “I have tried to tell you in many different ways how I will be a good husband to you. I have brought you tokens of my love, and I have persevered for your hand even when you laugh in my face.”

“Javor.” Darija stood, for the first time making her way to the door of her home and pressing her small hand to his. “I do not doubt that you would love a good wife with all of your heart. But I am sorry that I cannot be that wife for you. If I did not make it clear, I apologize, but I do not know how more clearly I can say that I am sure I will never make you happy, because I can never love you the way that you want.”

His eyes turned dark, and, jerking his hand away from hers, his mouth set in a small, sharp line. “Then I curse you, Darija Levinsckaya, that you will  _ never _ find one to love you without breaking your heart the way you have broken mine.”

In spite of herself, she wanted to laugh again, because she already knew that in her village, no girl would come to love her the way she loved them. She didn’t need Javor to tell her that she was destined for heartbreak.

He left in silent rage nevertheless, and that night when Darija lay her head down to sleep, not knowing it would be the last night she slept, she wished that he might find kindness from a wife that would love him, and that she might find the same.

She woke sometime later, drenched to the bone, flat on her back in the river, and try as she might, could not make her way to her feet. The curse had taken its hold, and she was the monster of the river, the  _ vodyanoi _ . Every pretty girl that crossed the river heard something like her screams for help, and for twelve days each appeared to her, reaching out across the water with fear in their faces, mouthing words that she couldn’t understand.

After she lost the fifth girl, She of the Water stopped screaming.

The people of the village say that it’s because their offerings to the  _ vodyanoi _ have finally pleased him. That with a watchful eye he takes their sacrifices, dormant under his webbed toes and crushed leaves like hair.

Darija lies quietly because she does not want to extend her pain to anyone else who does not deserve it.

Twelve years pass. She watches the girls of the village grow into women, marry men from across the river. Javor Hamenkov grows old and alone, unloved. Her parents die of broken hearts and creaking bodies, too weak to search for their missing girl any longer, too afraid to check her bed for her body left behind like the other girls. She allows herself not to want, to accept her loneliness as her curse.

Until one day a strange woman, in old, dark clothes and carrying an old, dark pot on her hip, vibrant red hair flowing out from under the hood of her robe, comes to cross the river and stops before she could set one toe across.

“Hello, there,” she says, kneeling down so that her sweet face might be smiling directly into Darija’s, if she didn’t know any better. She is beautiful, far too young for her tattered clothes, with soft green eyes full of light and life. “What, may I ask, are you doing down here, my dove?”

Darija blinks. No one has spoken to her in twelve years. No one has noticed her without her calling out for help.

The woman with the red hair smiles brighter, letting her fingers dip lazily into the water. “What? You’ve never seen a Baba Yaga before?”

“You?” she asks, her throat cracking with disuse. “You cannot be a Baba Yaga. You’re not...old, or ugly, or covered in spots, with a nose that reaches up to the ceiling.”

The woman tilts her head back, her laugh high and tinkling like a bell. “And you cannot be the  _ vodyanoi _ I have heard so much about. Where are your webbed hands, and your frog-head?”

Darija swallows hard, looking her in the eye. “Why are you here? The people of this village cannot have caused you harm, I have watched over them these twelve years.”

“Twelve years, huh?” the Baba Yaga who is too beautiful to be a Baba Yaga asks, her smile turning catlike and mischievous. “Twelve years you’ve been stuck in this water, powerless to help the ones you love and damn the ones you hate.” She draws a dainty finger over her chin, something between amusement and deep thought written all over her divine face. “Since you ask, I am here to collect a debt. And since you know the people of this village, perhaps you can help me find my debtor.”

“No,” Darija says slowly, her eyes following the lines of the Baba Yaga’s fingertips as they trace through the water. “If anybody here was making deals with a witch, I would have known. I would have seen them.”

“Unless they made a deal before you became the water spirit. Twelve years, right? Twelve years today, if I’m not mistaken.” Darija closes her eyes; she can almost feel the touch of the Baba Yaga ghosting through the water, her fingernails a breath’s edge from her skin. “Oh, my sweet child. I think you will enjoy this just as much as I will.”

She begins to ask what, but her lips do not have time to close around the word before two strong hands grip her by the sides of her face and pull her, gasping and soaking, from the river.

“I was cursed,” she chokes, shivering in the Baba Yaga’s arms. For the first time in years, she feels the glorious autumn air filling her lungs and bursting from her mouth. She is cold and she is hurting and scared and confused and it is  _ beautiful. _

“Hush,” the Baba Yaga whispers, threading her fingers through Darija’s hair. As if by magic, every touch makes her warm and dry, her hair no longer clinging damply to her skin. “You’re alright. You are safe now, my little dove.”

She curls into the witch’s hold, nose stinging with tears. “Who  _ are _ you?”

“I have told you already, sweet one. But, if you don’t like saying ‘Baba Yaga,’ especially in front of the village...you can call me Natalia.” She smiles again, and this time her eyes flash with power, a little gold underneath their tender olive green. “That was my name once. And you, little  _ vodyanoi _ ? What were you called before your curse?”

“Darija,” she says, feeling her spine begin to straighten, her warmth come back to every bone in her body. “Darija Levinsckaya.”

“Well, Darija Levinsckaya.” Natalia gets her feet beneath her, sliding one slender hand around her witch’s pot, the mortar and pestle lying innocently within, and slips the other hand into her new companion’s, squeezing gently. “Like I said, I think you might enjoy this as much as I will. Let us find the  _ mamlaz _ who cursed you.”

Darija doesn’t believe her eyes when Natalia dashes them both into the village, nor when she exacts her revenge on Javor, turning him into a frog-man and sentencing him to take over the river, nor even when she takes Darija away to her home, stoking the fire and filling her belly with supper for the first time in years.

But, with her eyes closed, she believes the soft warm kiss her Baba Yaga plants on her forehead, and the whispered promise that she is safe now.


End file.
